Did North Korea Violate The Agreement?

I have been watching the News and listening to all the people who to disagree with President Trump.  I have a few comment in this blog.

I have made this point before, but it applies in this situation.  Before I judge what a person has to say, I first qualify the person.  Here is how I evaluate the person.  I ask a few simple questions that can not be answered "yes" or "no".  I expand the questions to areas where the person should be competent to evaluated the depth of their knowledge and experience. Once this is done, I am now in a position to judge the quality of their opinions in the current subject area.  Follow that?

Now, look at President Trump in terms of his experience in negotiating with a wide range of people on a wide range of subjects.  Next, look at how much face to face time he has had with the Emperor of North Korea.  Once you have these facts about President Trump you can judge, by comparison, the weight to give the opinions of others.  Isn't this a very logical process?

No one can predict the future 100%, but we can predict the future with some positive probability and that is what I do when I evaluate the opinions of those who disagree with President Trump.  It is my position, based on the above, that the opinions about the actions of North Korea by President Trump are much more likely to be correct than those of others who have lower qualifications. Even if we have several of these people with lower qualifications who disagree with President Trump it does not reduce the probability that President Trump's opinions are the most accurate.

The other simple minded point that I want to make here is about statements by some of these people who claim that President Trump's tax reduction,  "did not help everyone".  This may sound logical, but it is one of the stupidest statements that a person can make.  When one is judging the impact of any decision on a large group of people who have different objectives, it is "impossible" to satisfy 100% or "all" of the people in the group.  It is my opinion  that people who continue to use "all" frequently are some of the stupidest people.  Listen for people frequently using "all" and see if you don't agree?

Paper In Land Fills Problem

I saw this reported on the News.  What is the largest volume thing that is being dumped into our land fills?  It turns out to be paper and the Global Warming nuts are having a fit.  This blog will shed some light on the subject.

It is interesting that the item of waste that is recycled the most is "Aluminum".  I think that most people must know that.  The second most recycled is "paper", but there is still a lot that is not.  You may feel that this is a big problem and that we need to pass some kind of law to make it mandatory to recycle paper, but I don't!  Here is why.

What is the concern of the Global Warming nuts?  It is their concern that us humans are putting too much Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere and Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas.  Do you agree with that?  Most Global Warming nuts do.  Think about this.  What is paper made from?  It is wood from trees.  We all know that.  Exactly how did the tree make the wood?  It took Carbon out of the air in the form of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen from water and made wood, which is a HydroCarbon.  With me so far on this?  It means that the tree took Carbon Dioxide out of the air and stored it in wood so that it would not cause Global Warming.

Because trees are doing all this work for free, then we should save the trees in the forest and make it against the law to cut any down.  This is how the Global Warming nuts think.  The problem with this is that eventually the trees will die or they will burn in a forest fire.  Either way, they stop growing and put all the Carbon Dioxide that they took out of the air back into the air.  In a mature forest, there is no net Carbon Dioxide taken out of the air.  That is a fact.  A dead rotting tree is no different from a tree that is burned in a forest fire.  What we need is for trees to make wood and for us humans to make it into paper and then put the paper into a land fill where the Carbon can not get back into the atmosphere.  It is a little like us humans making "coal" and storing it under ground.

The bottom line is that the more paper we bury in our land fills the more Carbon Dioxide that we will have taken out of the air and that seems to be the main objective of the Global Warming nuts.  Filling our land fills with paper is thus "not bad"!

Algorithms And AI

I have been involved with Decision Theory and Artificial Intelligence for the past 50 years and have some comments on the subject.

Both Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence have their place, but there are some key and significant differences. For years we have used both Algorithms and Decision Trees which are both easy to teach or represent on a two dimensional black board or text book.  The problem is that our historical methods of teaching or representing knowledge has been very limited.  As a result few of us have progressed beyond simple Algorithms and Decision Trees.

Here is another way to look at the situation.  I am going to use the crash of the two 737's for my example.  The pilots appear to have been trained in "how" all the controls worked and were able to operate them.  The normal training procedure after the pilot knows how to operate all the controls is to allow them to get more "experience" with more flying hours.  If you think about it, exactly what is "experience" supposed to provide to the pilot?  The pilot has been armed with a few "algorithms" that he can use in situations that are likely to occur, but these "algorithms" don't cover 100% of the possibilities that the pilot may encounter.  As you can imagine, in real life, there is an almost infinite number of different situations that any pilot can expect to encounter.  How can any system prepare a pilot for an infinite number of possibilities?  See the problem?

This is where "Artificial Intelligence" comes in.  AI is not an algorithm that only covers one or two situations.  It is a set of "rules" or "principles" that, given a situation, generates the "best" action to deal with the situation.  This is the way our brains work.  From what we have learned from personal experience allows us to generate new solutions that fit the situation, but which we have never before used or considered.  It is not magic that some people seem to know how to solve all kinds of problems that they have never encountered before.  It is that they have applied rules or principle that they had gained in the past to allow them to develop "new" solutions to new problems.  Exactly how one's brain does this is not clearly understood, but we know that it must be complex and that it makes use of different kinds of prior knowledge.  The challenge is to figure out how to do some of what our brain does with a computer program.

I think that you can see that it would be impossible to ever come up with enough different algorithms to compete with a human brain, but it may be possible to try to do it the way that the brain does. There are all kinds of computer systems that try to duplicate what our brain does that I will not go into here, but is seems clear that algorithms are just a start, but not the final solution.  You may even think about this like the "law" where our judges are always making what looks like different decisions based on their interpretation of the laws on the books.

Back to the pilots.  They knew "how" to operate all the controls, but they did not know "when" to do "what" or "how much" or "how fast".  If you have ever ridden in a car with a young driver, then you must have noticed how they "under" or "over" steer the car.  I think that this is exactly what the pilots did.  They over steered the plane until it crashed due to "PIO".  Pilot induced oscillation.  A good AI program could have prevented the crash.

New Slant On Economics

Many of us took Econ 101 when we were in college, but they never presented the subject like I am going to do  here.

It is an over simplification to look at economics as just "one big thing".  It needs to be broken down into its individual pieces.  Once that is done, the subject makes a lot more sense.  Here is my brake down.

(1)  Exploitation of natural resources
(2)  High skilled worker value added
(3)  Low skilled worker value added
(4)  Capital intensive value added

You could come up with another list, but this is mine.  In a prior blog, I pointed out how significant natural resources are in economics.  If you have oil wells and other people do not, there is no way that those without oil wells can compete with you.  You can grow corn in Iowa, but not in Alaska so Iowa has an advantage that Alaska will never have.  Even if they could grow corn in a green house in Alaska, it would not be competitive with corn grown in Iowa.  I think that we can all understand how significant the "good luck" of having valuable natural resources can be to any economic system. The danger to natural resource based economics is over population since the natural resources are "limited"!

We hear about Silicon Valley all the time and how there is an economic boom going on there.  It is because there are a lot of "high skilled" people working there.  Much like natural resources, high skill can be in short supply and often only available in a few areas.  Locations that do not have natural resources or special high skills have to buy those products or services from those who do have them.  You can't do much to offset natural resources, but you can do something about the lack of high skills.  The problems with high skills is that it is like a race and you have to work continually to keep up or get ahead.  Long term, you can't sit back and take in an economic advantage..Unlike natural resources where you can have too many people to divide the wealth from natural resources between, Developing more high skilled workers can grow your advantage.

Low skilled workers are a totally different kind of economic advantage and problem. For most economic systems, low skilled worker economies are a disadvantage.  These types of people do not produce much and still consume a lot.  They will never enjoy a very high median quality of life.  They may have a large economy, like China, but the median quality of life will be far below those who have a high skilled.  We hear far too much about the size of economies like China and far too little about their median quality of life.  There are only two ways to turn around an economy based on low skilled value added and that is to reduce the population of those low skilled workers or figure out how to raise their skill level.  The world has far too many low skilled workers while avoiding any discussion of the solution, which is birth control.  We all know these countries ,but have difficulty facing the facts of the solution.

Finally, we have capital driven economies.  The problem with this one is that you have to first figure out how to come up with the capital in the first place.  Modern examples are places like Saudi Arabia where they have amassed great amounts of wealth from the exploitation of their oil natural resources.  They know that eventually their oil will run out and they want to have a back up where they can purchase the most productive machines that can produce valuable products that a poorer economy could never compete with.

If you look around the world, you will see all kinds of economies that have a mix of the four elements above.  Those who have the strongest economies have much more of elements (1), (2) and (4) and a much smaller amount of (4).  These groups change over time, so that to understand economics, you need to look at how the mix of these have changed over time.  Further, you need to be able to look ahead and estimate how the mix may change for different economies.  The mix can be changed by the policies and actions of governments.  Understanding this is critical to be able to judge if those decisions were good or bad.

PS--The USA passed a program where the government guaranteed student loans, but did not put any restrictions on college majors.  As a result, the USA has spent over 4 trillion dollars on education that has been mostly wasted.  China on the other hand, promotes technical majors and thus has significantly out paced the USA in the high skill economic segment.  The decline of the USA compared to China is predictable for the future.  The only hope for the USA is some kind of "brain drain" from the rest of the world, but we are allowing in millions of unskilled immigrants!  The USA is in the process of committing economic suicide!

Beekeeping In The USA

I don't know if I have blogged on this before, but I have been a beekeeper since 1949.

I have been a beekeeper in locations from our Southern border to our Northern border.  In each area beekeeping is much different.  The season is much shorter in the north than in the south and because of this, us beekeepers are required to supplement our hives by feeding them sugar syrup.  I have friends in Canada who are also beekeepers and I have been amazed that they can be successful in such a northern area.  As it turns out, their methods are not that much different from those of us in the South, except for one very significant thing.

Now, what do you think that big significant thing is?  It is the price of sugar!  Here in the USA the price of sugar is between $0,50 and $0,60 per pound.  Check it out in your grocery store and you will confirm this price.  Us Northern beekeepers often have to feed each hive of bees more than 25 pounds of sugar for a cost, as much as $15.00 per hive.  In Canada, the cost of sugar is only $0.12 per pound.  We have to pay 5 times as much for our sugar here in the USA and that hurts us beekeepers.  It also runs up the price for honey for all of you!

In a prior blog, I took on the government's corrupt sugar mandate program.  You and me are being screwed by our own government and a "few" farmers who grow sugar beets or sugar cane.  These are some of the richest farmers in the USA and it is all because they and our government are screwing all of us.  You have to ask why in Canada, do they pay only 12 cents per pound for their sugar and we have to pay 60 cents or 5 times?  Canada does not even produce their own sugar.  They buy it on the open world market.

Here in the USA, our government mandates that we have to add ethanol to our gasoline that is made from corn.  That drives up the cost of gasoline and every other product that depends on corn, such as meat.  I know several farmers who grow corn and most are not the family farmers that we know from history.  Farm land is now very expensive because of the subsidease that they have gotten from us and our government.  The complaints from most farmers is because they paid too much for their land than it was really worth.  Interesting that the cost of college has gone up too as a result of our government getting too involved.  How about the cost of medical care?  Has government helped or hurt the prices of things that they have touched?  I leave that to you!

True Facts About Global Warming

Do you think that the people who are concerned about global warming would be interested in a few facts?  I am not so sure.  They seem to be some kind of religious nuts about global warming to me, but I am going to blog some facts any way.

How about starting with a little 4th grade math?  The Earth is a big place with a lot of different countries.  The USA is just one of many.  Let's figure that the Earth can naturally take care of 25% of the Carbon Dioxide now being produced.  Even if their were no humans, the Earth would still be producing Carbon Dioxide.  Let's assume that the Earth produces 20% of the total.  That means the Earth could go on forever and still not cause global warming.  Is this getting confusing?

Next, assume the USA produces 20% of the world's Carbon Dioxide that is produced by us humans.  That means the USA produces 16% of the current world's Carbon Dioxide.  If the USA were able to eliminate 100% of the Carbon Dioxide that we produce, the world would still have to deal with the remaining 84%,  If while the USA was committing suicide the rest of the world continued to produce Carbon Dioxide, the Earth would still have enough Carbon Dioxide to cause global warming.  Do you think that it is worth it for the USA to commit suicide while "not" saving the world.

How about massive immigration across our Southern border?  It impacts Carbon Dioxide and global warming too and here is how.  Due to the high quality of life in the USA, we create at least 5 times as much Carbon Dioxide per person than the poor people coming from the poor countries.  If we get a million immigrants from these poor countries, it will be like 5 times as many more USA citizens.  The net impact is like adding 4 million more people here.  Given that we have about 330 million people now, it means that their impact on more Carbon Dioxide is about 1.2% per year.  In just a few years, at this rate, immigration could easily counter act any of our efforts to reduce our generation of Carbon Dioxide.  These are the facts!

Think about it?  We can't save the world alone.  Further, we can not saved it if all other countries in the world don't hold up their end.  What if the quality of life improved in the rest of the world to the level of the USA?  That alone would cancel out any efforts to reduce the production of Carbon Dioxide.  If "people" are the root cause of global warming, why don't we focus on reducing the world's human population or stop trying to improve the quality of life for everyone in the world?

The bottom line is this (1) "Population" and (2) "Quality of life" are the root causes.  Let' focus there!!

Tariff Debate

It is very entertaining to read about the debate on tariffs.  Few that I have read seem to really understand the situation.  They appear to suffer from taking Econ 101 in our colleges.  Here are my views.

I have seen no one who looks at all the alternatives or who uses the concept of the "free body diagram" principle.  Most sound like the liberals who use "out layers" or claim that the idea is not "perfect".  When most claim that tariffs are bad, they site some group who are hurt by the tariff.  In a large country like the USA that has a complex economy, do you really think that any decision or policy could help 100% of the population?  No!  Notice that I never use the expression "all" because I know that it is impossible to satisfy or help "all" of the people.  Look at WWII where we freed Europe?  Was that good or bad?  Think of all the young American soldiers who died?  That was "bad".  The only war that would be "good" would be one where "zero" of our soldiers were killed and we know that would be impossible.  More of our pilots have been killed in training accidents than in the wars we have fought in the past 10 years.

I asked a friend about the "primal and dual" of tariffs and he had no idea what I was talking about.  A tariff is a "primal" action that has as its purpose to reduce the amount of products imported into the USA.  It does this by making imported products more expensive.  Now, what is a "dual"?  A "dual" is an action that comes at the same problem from the opposite direction. If we want to make imported products more expensive so that our citizens don't buy them, why don't we just ask our citizens to not buy imported products?  If they were to do that, their neighbor might be able to get a job making the product.  By buying the cheaper imported product at the expense of one's neighbor is just a way of "gaming" the system or cheating.  Aren't we all in this economic system together?

In the case of putting a duty on products from China, we know that China will come back with a duty on our corn.  That will hurt farmers and they will cry to Washington DC and our politicians will cave.  This is because the tariff is not "perfect" and we don't have the collective guts to realize that the tariff is still in the total interests of the USA.

If you used the logic of Econ 101, the tariff might lower the total economic production of the total economies of the China and the USA, but is that the correct objective?  No!  It is my position that a tariff would raise the economic production in the USA and lower the economic production in China.  I look at that as being "good".  How about you?  In Econ 101, they don't teach about what policies are "best" for the USA.  They focus on what they claim is the "big picture".  What we need are professors in  our colleges and universities who teach about what is good for the USA for a change.

Farmers will be hurt by tariffs, but the hurt would be less had we not given them "candy" by mandating the use of ethanol.  Due to this bad policy, farmers were encouraged to grow more corn and pay more for their land.  The increase in the price of farm land may have looked good in the short term, but it is clearly bad in the long term,  I read that farmers were hard hit after WWI because they had a "one time" demand for their products in Europe.  After the farmers in Europe recovered, they did not need farm products form the USA.  Those are the facts of life and the USA farmers should have been honest about the cause and thus the cure.

Tariffs are not perfect, but what is?  What alternative is?  If you don't have  better idea, stop complaining!

Simple Lesson In Economics

This is a short blog with a simple lesson in economics.

If you watch the News, then you know that most are seriously concerned about the "unfair" differences in income.  The big difference between high earners and low earners is "bad"!  I am here to point out the it may not be "bad". 

Take the example of an economic model where 100% of all manufacturing jobs paid exactly the same.  There would be no people making more than others in the manufacturing area.  For many, they think that is good, but let me show you that it is not.  Take a person who just got out of high school and got a manufacturing job that paid $20 per hour.  After he has acquired more skill and was more valuable to their employer, he was still paid $20 per hour.  You have to ask, "Why would a person what to gain more skills and make themselves more valuable"?  They wouldn't!

If the difference between skilled and unskilled was "greater", it would be an incentive for people to gain more skill and make themselves more valuable.  Isn't that what everyone wants to be able to do?  In a socialism economic system where everyone earns the same, you can bet that it will be a low productive system where the players are poorer than they would have been had they had a competitive capitalistic economic system.

The bottom line is that a system based on "merit" is the only one that is really "fair"!

PS--Why do most people go to college?  It is to make themselves worth more so they can move up the economic ladder.  What if there was no economic ladder?  That is what liberals want.